Measuring the economic returns to higher education has become crucial as advanced skills have become more important to economic growth. Measuring these returns is difficult owing to selection on aptitude into different institutions; multiple outcomes; the attribution problem that occurs when a person attends a few institutions in sequence; computing the longitudinal cost to society of a one's education. Hoxby explores what we learn from credible estimates of the returns to higher education. Her evidence shows that higher aptitude people earn a greater return to any marginal increase in educational resources (called single-crossing). This sets up a serious policy problem for earlier education.

Professor Hoxby will also contribute to the Maastricht University Workshop in Economics on May 16.

Prof. Hoxby is an internationally acknowledged economist in the field of the Economics of Education. Her research focusses on high-achieving children from low income families. She has published her work in many top-ranked academic journals such as Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal, and Journal of Economic Perspectives, and she has won several academic prizes.

The department of economics (AE2), Studium Generale and SCOPE Maastricht jointly organize the Joan Muysken lecture, in honor of the founding father of the School of Business and Economics. Funded by Universiteitsfond Limburg SWOL. 

Photo: Courtesy of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University